RSS
Home
Rebuttal to the Time Magazine article 'Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin' (part 1 of 5)
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
The recent August 9th 2009 cover story from Time Magazine, "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin" (Cloud, 2009) may be one of the most poorly researched and misrepresented articles about exercise and fitness. Not only did the author John Cloud misinterpret much of the exercise and health science literature--he has plenty of other articles where his seemingly lack of science and health knowledge is moot--and wrote an article that could potentially damage the public if they follow his misinformed advice, but Time Magazine has been completely irresponsible in publishing this article without seemingly proper fact checking. Cloud begins the article by touting his bitterness towards exercise and finds studies which seem to rationalize his disregard for proper exercise and nutrition. Cloud seems to lack comprehension in science, health, and fitness to accurately convey truthful information. The inaccurate and misleading conclusions he draws may make the metabolic syndrome (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc...) epidemic even worse if people believe his story. Although at times he does state exercise has its importance, it is buried in the middle and at the end of the story amongst misleading information about how exercise is bad.
Cloud seems biased from the start as he conveys his disdain for exercise. His lack of comprehension about caloric expenditure and nutrition is shown when he falsely thinks that an extra half mile of running a week will be enough to counter act his food indulgences. By his own description, he has a poor, unimagined exercise routine and ill-defined goals. Also, he didn’t seek a nutritionist’s advice on how to eat properly. If his trainer is not addressing these issues, he should have sought out a new, more qualified trainer long ago.
Beyond Cloud’s personal bias, he misinterprets and misquotes much of the primary research in order to support his far-fetched ideas. Even though Cloud was correct to assert that participation in physical activity has increased from 1980 to 2000 (Steffen, 2006), he seems to try to imply that this has caused an increase in obesity because during the same time, obesity has also increased. A common mistake among non-scientists, Cloud seems to imply correlation means causation. Increase in exercise does not cause an increase in obesity. In the same study that Cloud tried to imply a link to the cause of obesity to a rise in exercise, it is stated that “[o]verall, BMI was 1-2 kg.m-2 lower among individuals who participated regularly in physical activity (Steffen, 2006).” This means that physical activity is actually correlated with lower body mass index (BMI), a way to measure obesity.
Cloud then takes the reader through a rollercoaster of support for and against exercise. While he accurately describes the health benefits for people of all ages, he begins his major argument that “… the past few years of obesity research show that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated.” Cloud quotes Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University, as saying that exercise is “pretty useless” for weight loss. Cloud even gives the reader his own anecdotal evidence: “it’s entirely possible that those of us who regularly go the gym would weigh even more if we exercise less. But like many other people, I get hungry after I exercise, so I often eat more on the days I work out than on the days I don’t.” He states that exercise stimulates hunger and causes over-consumption. The exact opposite is true and has been found repeatedly in literature. Short term affects of resistance training and aerobic training on hunger have been studied in obese and non-obese male and female subjects. It has been found that exercise does not increase hunger or consumption and actually suppresses hunger right after a bout of exercise (Blundell & King, 1998) (Kissileff, Pi-Sunyer, Segal, Meltzer, & Foelsch, 1990) (Westerp-Plantenga, Verwegan, Ijedema, Wijckmans, & Saris, 1997) (King, Lluch, Stubbs, & Blundell, 1997) (Pomerleau, Imbeault, Parker, & Doucet, 2004) (Broom, Batterham, King, & Stensel, 2009).
PART 2: The compensation problem
PART 3: Self control is like a muscle
PART 4: Closing the energy gap
© Copyright 2009 Christopher D. Nogiec
Related Articles:
Comments
.jpg)
.JPG)
